Viceroy Caterpillar

	I am pretty sure that this is the caterpillar for the Viceroy butterfly. It looks exactly like the picture in my butterfly book and is one of the few caterpillars pictured there. This fellow was on one of our apple trees, and was making short work of the leaves. We have two apple trees and there were caterpillars on both, but they had a slightly different color pattern. In the picture the dark part looks almost black while the ones on the other apple tree were a dark brown. Other than that they looked just alike. There were only a few on each tree, so even thought they were eating a lot of leaves individually the overall damage was very slight. The appearance is kind of like bird droppings, which I guess is their way of avoiding becoming food. In fact there were a couple small ones that I thought had died and dried up. When I came back and they had moved I realized that they were in fact very much alive.
	When I would move around them they would go into the position in the picture at the left. The small end that is sticking up in the air is not the head! The head is the end with the two "horns" that is hanging over the edge of the leaf. You can see from this picture why I thought the little ones were dead. When they are in this position and not moving they look like something that has died and dried up. Unfortunately I don't think they fooled everyone. They were there one day and the next day they were all gone. I think the birds finally figured out that they were something to eat. I looked all over the trees and no caterpillars, no chrysalises, no nothing. I looked for them for a couple days and never did find them. Either they got eaten or moved on to another tree.
	To the left is a larger view of the head end.
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